BOARDROOM BLACK HOLES AND TABOOS: REVISITED

This survey expands research based upon an article originally written by the Fiscal Doctor, Gary Patterson, and published in Financier Worldwide, as a Boardroom Intelligence article, Boardroom Black Holes and Taboos (December 2014).

CONFIDENTIALITY

These survey results will be treated with complete confidentiality. The information submitted will not be used to identify the respondent or the respondent’s company directly or indirectly. Data will be used in aggregate only, with a sufficiently large sample of companies to ensure anonymity.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Please provide your contact information to receive a complimentary copy of the survey results and article.

Survey

The following statements reflect the top ten concerns of boards and executives from interviews conducted with top executives by the Fiscal Doctor, Gary Patterson, and Maureen Metcalf of Metcalf + Associates.

Your response to these statements can help assess your company’s overall fiscal fitness in comparison to our other respondent companies’ responses. It should take about 5 minutes to complete. In return for your time investment, we will send you a copy of the results and the article we will publish based on them.

Please indicate your board and/or top executives’ level of concern (1-10) on each of the following statements with a 1 being “our board needs to address this now” to 10 being “we have this covered and spending more time on it would divert us from other more important activities.”

Name*

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Most Recent Role*

SCORING:1 = “our board needs to address this now” |10 = “we have this covered and spending more time on it would divert us from other more important activities”

1. We spend more time on urgent tactical items than on more important strategic issues. Strategy should be paramount and drive everything. However, we let the short-term urgent items drive behavior that diverts our attention from the long-term strategic opportunities.*

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2. We don’t do enough data gathering focused on performance benchmarking, future trends and likely disruptions we may have to face.*

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3. We are not sufficiently investing in training, intellectual property and technology. We play it safe and do not always consider all potential costs and benefits of foregone opportunities. We need to reallocate resources to allow us to think bigger and disrupt the status quo with innovative thinking and solutions.*

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4. We have not taken enough time to think through acceptable risks/risk levels in evaluating significant opportunities or threats such as: cyber security, geopolitical risks and reputation risks. Our enterprise risk management (ERM) appetite needs to be better defined, mutually agreed upon with management, and supported from top to bottom.*

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5. We need more accurate, timely and important financial information to guide more proactive and less reactive decision-making by the board and company leadership.*

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6. We have a lack of clarity on our customer facing and key stakeholder initiatives and how they relate to our broader corporate strategy.*

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7. We lack comprehensive succession planning for top levels of leadership for projected needs over the next 5 to 10 years.*

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8. Our incentive plans for executives and directors need to be reviewed to encourage our best long-term corporate interests versus this quarter or year’s results, as well as to evaluate the distribution of pay equity from CEO to entry level worker.*

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9. We need to refresh our director skills and encourage existing directors to speak openly and candidly to generate robust conversation to drive better decisions. We need to evaluate the directors who do not actively participate and/or are long-term members retired in place, and adopt a process for evaluating meeting effectiveness and taking improvement or corrective measures as needed.*

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10. We are not evaluating and leveraging enough ever-changing technologies in expedient and cost effective ways that differentiate us competitively, or improve and/or protect our business.*